Good morning, my name is Jenna. How are you?
All good, You're good. I can't believe we're in the
last week of April, can you? I mean, I had a full on
conversation with someone the other day about next month
meaning April, and then I realised actually that is where
we are now. We are in April.
You can see a little bit about where my brain is at maybe, but
that means that summer is fast approaching.
Who has booked their summer holiday?
Anyone. Few people.
Yes, few people have booked it. Well, we're starting to think
about summer in our house and it got me reflecting on our holiday
last year. Last year we actually did a
house swap with a French family, so they came to our house in
Hatfield and we went to their house in the South of France and
in Yeah, not sure who got the better deal there, but anyway,
no, we love Hatfield. Hatfield's great, but the area
that we were in, in the South of France, the area that we were
staying in had the most beautiful beaches all around.
And so every few days we would like pile the kids into the car
and we would go off and explore one of the beaches.
And I remember 1 beach that we went to, it was absolutely
packed and the kids went off into the water with AJ because
you know, he's the fun one. And I was there quite happy,
sitting on the beach doing absolutely nothing.
But I said to the kids, do you know what?
If you need to come out, you know where I am, just head
straight down the beach, look for the red umbrella and you
will find me. After a little while, my son,
our son gets out of the water and I can see him doing exactly
that, which I said to do. I can see him heading straight
back and he's looking for this red umbrella, although this
point he is halfway down the beach and I can see that he's
just starting to get worried. He can't find where I am.
I see the panic kind of setting in as he realises he can't find
me and I'm waving and he just can't figure out where I've
gone. You see, what had happened was
all the time that they were playing in the water, in the
sea, they'd been carried away by the current.
They're drifted far along the beach, no warning, no obvious
danger, just a slow drift from a current that they couldn't see
and they couldn't feel. And the point of me sharing that
story is that I think often that happens in our faith.
We don't walk away from Jesus in one big decision, but we drift
through 1000 small ones. And as you know, we have been in
the book of Colossians. Paul is writing this letter to
remind the Colossian church and to remind us today that if we
are not rooted in Jesus, then we too will drift.
And when we drift, we start to believe that maybe Jesus isn't
enough. You know, this was particularly
true for the Colossian church, who at the time, they were being
exposed to all different kinds of ideas and theologies which
they were starting to add on to the gospel.
And so by writing this letter, Paul is calling this out of
them. And he's saying, guys, remember
what you've heard. Remember how your lives have
been changed. Remember that Jesus is it.
He is enough. As if you have your Bibles with
you, we are going to turn to our passage today in Colossians,
which is Colossians 2, verses 6 to 15.
If you don't have a Bible, by the way, please let one of the
team know. We would love to give you 1 and
if you don't know where it is, Colossians is near the back of
the book in the New Testament. Prod someone and ask them to
help you if you need to. But if failing, all of that is
going to come up on the screen. So Colossians 26 to 15, it says
this. So then, just as you received
Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in Him,
rooted and built up in Him, strengthened in the faith as you
were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.
See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and
deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and
the elemental spiritual forces of this world, rather than on
Christ. For in Christ all the fullness
of the Deity lives in bodily form, and in Christ you have
been brought to fullness. He is the head over every power
and authority. In Him you were also circumcised
with a circumcision not performed by human hands.
Your whole self, ruled by the flesh, was put off when you were
circumcised by Christ, having been buried with Him in baptism,
in which you were also raised with Him through your faith in
the working of God, who raised Him from the dead.
When you were dead in your sins, and in the uncircumcision of
your flesh, God made you alive with Christ.
He forgave us all our sins, having cancelled the charge of
our legal indebtedness which stood against us and condemned
us. He has taken it away, nailing it
to the cross, and having disarmed the powers and
authority, he made a public spectacle of them triumphing
over them by the cross. Amen.
Well, we're going to go through
this in a little bit more detail.
We're going to take a few verses at a time and unpick what it is
that Paul is saying here. So firstly, verses six to seven,
Paul is saying that Jesus is enough for growth.
Verse 6 says so. Then just as you received Christ
Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and
built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught,
and overflowing with thankfulness.
Now I'm not going to assume that everyone in this room has yet
received Jesus as their Lord and Saviour.
Some of you are here and you're on a journey and that is so good
that you're here. But if you have received Jesus
as your Lord, whether that was yesterday or 50 years ago, we
are to continue to live our lives in Him, to invite Him into
every single detail of it, Rooted and built up in Him.
You know that word Rooted? We've come across it a lot,
haven't we? In fact, it's the title of this
series, Rooted. There are two main functions for
the root of a plant #1 the root's job is to anchor the
plant in the soil. At some point the wind is going
to blow and the storm is going to rage.
And if we are not rooted in Jesus, the only one who is
constant, the only one who is able to hold us, then we are not
going to be able to withstand the pressures of this world.
And #2 the root's job is to absorb water and nutrients from
the soil. When we are rooted in Jesus, we
receive all that we need to grow and to flourish and to thrive.
Jeremiah 17, seven to 8 says, But blessed is the one who
trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in Him.
They will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its
roots by the stream. It doesn't fear when heat comes,
its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of
drought, and it never fails to bear fruit.
Isn't that beautiful? When we trust in the Lord, when
we place our confidence in Him, it says that we won't be afraid
when the heat comes, we will always bear fruit.
Our leaves will always be green. Because fruit isn't produced by
effort. It's produced by connection to
Jesus being rooted in Him. And it's interesting to me that
what keeps us standing isn't what people see.
It's what we're rooted in. It's where we're drawing life
from when no one else is watching.
You know, roots are underground, aren't they?
In the dark, in the hidden places.
And I want to ask you again this morning, how are your roots
doing? Where are they anchored?
Who or what are you clinging to? Maybe you're clinging to your
family or your friends or your spouse, maybe maybe your
boyfriend or your girlfriend. Maybe you're clinging to your
bank account or your position that you hold in your career, in
your workplace. Or maybe you're like, it's OK,
we've got a good strategy in place.
We have a plan. If things go wrong when the
storm comes, we've got a plan. Or maybe you're the opposite and
actually you're just kind of feeling your way through with
your eyes shut, hoping for the best.
Maybe you're here and you know that you've got a root of
unforgiveness or a fear or of disappointment, and occasionally
you see the fruit of that in the way that you behave or the words
that come out of your mouth. I want to encourage you this
morning to ask the Lord to help you identify those things
because it might just be that those roots need uprooting in
order to re root them in Him and He will help you to do that.
Jesus is enough for growth #2 Jesus is enough for wisdom.
From verse 8 it says, see to it that no one takes you captive
through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on
human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces of
this world rather rather than on Christ.
You know, when we go on holiday as a family, when we go on a
road trip or whatever, we like to play games in the car.
Anyone else do that pass the time?
We have like the number plate game where you start at A and
you have to find a number plate beginning with A and then you
work through the alphabet. Or we have it where you look at
the last three letters of a car registration and whoever makes
the longest word out of the three letters wins.
But recently we've been playing not so much of A game, but
choosing a song. And so there's six of us.
And so we go round and we choose a song by typing it into Apple
Music. And we just kind of all get a
choice in what we want to play. And so AJ will choose some kind
of old school garage and the kids will choose some kind of
song, which we're like, we look at each other.
We're like, how do they know the full title?
The person who sings this song that goodness knows.
And then we get to the the little one who's 3 and he'll
choose something like Wheels on the Bus or Ba Ba Black Sheep.
And we're like, we have to endure it for the next however
long. But recently we've cottoned on
to the fact that we can use Siri to change the songs instead of
having to type it into the phone.
The only problem is that it's connected to AJ's phone and so
Siri only seems to recognise his voice.
And the other day we were going up to York and I was like, do
you know what? I'm going to try and trick it.
So I'm like, start to imitate his voice the best I can.
So I'm like, ho Siri play Taylor Swift or, you know, whatever.
And the kids are like, no mum, you need to use language that he
would use. So ho Siri, mate, play whatever
song. But it didn't work.
You see, we were trying to imitate A J's voice, to use the
words that he would have used in the tone that he would have used
it to get it to play what we wanted it to play.
We're exposed to many things in life, ideas, teachings, beliefs,
dare I say it, words and prophecies that might appear
like Christian on the tin. That's sound very much like God.
Maybe it has the tone of him or perhaps the words that he would
probably use. But the reality is it's not him.
It's not in line with his character.
It's not the truth of who he is. And Paul says here that we need
to see to it, to be alert so that the world doesn't trap us
with its emptiness and deception.
We need wisdom from Jesus to help us discern what is really
Him. You know, the world would love
to tell us that we should follow our own truth.
I mean, that sounds really wise, doesn't it?
But not everything that sounds wise is true, and not everything
that feels right leads to life. If it doesn't centre on Jesus,
if it's not the absolute truth of who He is and what His Word
says, it will eventually lead us away from Him.
And in fact, that word captive in this scripture means that it
doesn't just lead us away from him, it will enslave us.
It will keep us in bondage. And sometimes these deceptive
philosophies are really easy to spot, but other times they're
harder because they're just a subtle twist of the truth.
Like as a Christian, when when we try and justify a decision
and we say, oh, it's OK because God, because God wants me to be
happy. You see, the problem with this
is that we're reshaping God around our human desires rather
than letting him define what is actually good.
Which by the way, might mean that we have to walk
uncomfortable paths which don't actually make us happy because
the right path isn't always the easy path.
It might be that we have to forgive somebody that's really
difficult to forgive, or lay something down in an act of
obedience. Or what about another common
belief that we need to have? We need to fix ourselves.
We need to have it all together before we come to God.
I can't go to church today. I can't possibly pray for that
person because I'm just not in a right place with God.
That might sound like the right thing to say, but what it's
actually doing is replacing grace with effort.
The truth actually in what Jesus says is that we can come to him,
come to him just as we are. We don't have to have everything
figured out. Or there's this other end of the
spectrum where maybe you come to church every week, say the right
thing, stand up, sit down when the right time, raise your hand
at the right chorus, you know, whatever that is.
But if you're honest, there actually isn't any real
relationship going on with God. Maybe this is the type of human
tradition that Paul is talking about here, going through the
motions without allowing Jesus to transform us from the inside.
Or perhaps it looks like spirituality, which includes the
whole like mixing of different beliefs.
Church on a Sunday, horoscopes on a Monday, or like praying one
minute, manifesting it the next. Like guys, all these things
might sound right, they might feel right or be widely accepted
by the society we live in, but they all shift us away from
making Jesus our centre. We need his wisdom every day to
be able to recognise this. And so Jesus is enough for
growth and he is enough for wisdom and thirdly, most
importantly, he is enough for salvation.
Number verse 9 says for in Christ all the fullness of the
deity lives in bodily form, and in Christ you have been brought
to fullness. He is the head over every power
and authority. Paul is making a really strong
statement here. He's saying that Jesus doesn't
just reflect God, He doesn't just point to God.
He fully embodies the deity, which means God.
He is God. The entire, complete, whole
essence of God is in Jesus Christ.
And he's saying that as we belong to Jesus, that means that
we don't lack anything either. We are complete.
We've been brought to fullness in Him.
Not partially filled, not nearly filled, but we are fully filled.
And when we're fully filled, we don't have to top up with
anything. You don't have to top up
anything that's already full. We don't need to add anything to
complete us or to improve us when we are in Him.
I love how the message translation ties this little bit
together. It says that everything of God
gets expressed in Him being Jesus so you can see and hear
Him clearly. You don't need a telescope, A
microscope or a horoscope to realise the fullness of Christ
and the emptiness of the universe without Him.
When you come to Him, that fullness comes together for you
too. Paul goes on in verse 11 to say
that in him you were also circumcised.
With a circumcision not performed by human hands, your
whole self, ruled by the flesh, was put off when you were
circumcised by Christ, having been buried with him in baptism,
in which you were also raised with him through your faith in
the working of God, who raised him from the dead.
We read about circumcision quite a lot in the Old Testament, and
we first come across it in Genesis 17, when God makes a
covenant with Abraham, a promise to Abraham.
And he says that all the men should be circumcised as a sign,
as an outward sign that they belong to God.
And so it was one of the ways that the Israelites were set
apart. But Paul is saying here that us
belonging to God, it's no longer about a physical, external
ritual that is performed by human hands, but instead it's
about an internal cutting away of sin, an inward transformation
that only Jesus can do. You see, the world will call us
to live a certain way. Our sinful nature will call us
to live a certain way. But we have been set apart.
We have been set apart as a holy people of God.
Jesus has cut away that sinful nature.
It's nothing to do with us being good.
It's nothing to do with us keeping a long list of laws.
It is all about what Jesus has done on the cross.
Acts 4 verse 12 says salvation is found in no one else.
For there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which
we must be saved. Jesus has saved us.
He saved us from the power of sin and the judgement that we
deserve. You know, the old has gone and
the new has come. We have literally been saved
from death into life. That's what it says in verse 12
in this scripture here that we've been reading.
It says we've been buried and we've been raised through
baptism into new life, just as Jesus was.
We celebrated this a few weeks ago, didn't we?
As a church family, we had 23 people get baptised in this very
room. Who said that?
Do you know what? I've tried doing it my own way.
They've tried filling themselves up with things that the world
has to offer, but they'd come to realise that nothing cuts it.
There is nothing that can save us.
There is nothing that can set us free from the power of sin,
which ultimately leads to death, other than the blood of Jesus.
We don't need to add to the gospel because there's nothing
that can be added or nothing that can improve what is already
complete and what is already finished.
Jesus and Jesus alone is enough for salvation, and finally He is
enough for victory. Verse 13 says when you were dead
in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh,
God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins.
Having cancelled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which
stood against us and condemned us, He's taken it away, nailing
it to the cross. And having disarmed the powers
and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them
triumphing over them by the cross.
The cross wasn't symbolic, it was a legal transaction.
God didn't just turn a blind eye and ignore all the debt that we
owed, but instead he chose to pay it.
He chose to pay it for us by nailing it to the cross, which
means that the long record that is against us, it doesn't exist
anymore. You know, all those things that
we do and we say and we think that we just don't want anybody
to ever know. It's not just been brushed under
the carpet. It's actually been dealt with,
paid for in full, finished. And this means that all the
spiritual forces that we were once under, the spirit of
accusation, the spirit of oppression, the spirit of
condemnation, they've all been defeated too.
Verse 15, it says they've been disarmed.
There is no power. Everything that the powers and
authorities intended as the ultimate showcase of their
strength became the very moment of their public shame.
What looked like defeat on the cross was actually total
victory. And to finish, I want to share a
story with you. This is about a man who many
years ago he was stood at a slave auction and as he was
standing there watching, he was just seeing these people like 1
after the other coming forward and people were buying them.
They were being bought and they were being sold like property.
And then one young woman was brought forward and the bidding
started. Voices called out and the
bidding was getting higher and higher for this woman.
Men making comments about what they were going to do with her
once they bought her. And then one final voice spoke
out across the room and gave the highest bid, one that nobody
could match. And he won this girl.
And it turned out to be the man that was standing there watching
from the side. And as this man stepped in and
he stepped forward, he took the girl and they turned and started
to walk away from the crowd. And this girl looked at him with
tears streaming down her face, full of anger and suspicion.
And she said to the man, what are you going to do with me?
And he replied, I'm going to set you free.
Completely stunned, she looked at the man in his eyes.
She stopped in her tracks. And she said, free.
What does that even mean? And he said, it means that
you're no longer a slave. It means you can go wherever you
want. You can do whatever you want.
And she paused and she quietly said, then I'll go with you,
then I'll go with you. This man didn't just buy her.
He didn't just pay the highest price for her.
He set her free. And that's what Jesus has done
for each and every one of us. So the question this morning is
not are you free? The question is, are you living
like you're free? The work of the cross is
incredible. He has given us a way out.
Why would we want to look for freedom anywhere else other than
in Jesus? Why would we want to enslave
ourselves to other masters who on the face of things offer
freedom, looks like they offer freedom, but in reality just
lead us into bondage? Galatians 51 says it's for
freedom that Christ has set us free.
Stand firm then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by
a yoke of slavery. Where is it that you need God's
freedom this morning? Where do you need His freedom?
As we move towards Him, as we grow in our relationship with
Him, we're going to make mistakes, we are going to get
things wrong, but there is so much grace.
Remember the story that I shared right at the beginning about my
son having drifted down the beach, just like I was standing
on the beach watching him, calling his name?
You have a Heavenly Father who has his eyes on you.
He's watching. His gaze has never left you and
He is calling your name and He is beckoning you back.
He's beckoning you back to Him this morning and inviting you to
return to Him and to root yourself once again in Him.
Amen.